The exemption certificate and the erasure of Indigenous
identity

Initially I began by searching for scholarly literature about the
Queensland certificate of exemption. I discovered only a very small number
of publications about the exemption certificate and its repercussions.
Some notable authors mentioned various aspects of the certificate of
exemption.[6] These included the fact that once Aboriginal people gained
the certificate they would in effect have to lose their Indigenous
identity and culture, their family and their homelands, in exchange for
living in the wider community. Yet the social impact on cultural identity
for the certificate holders and their descendants remained largely
unexplored by research and analysis.

This situation drove me into researching material about the
legislative origins of the exemption certificate, ‘The
Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium
Act, 1897 (Qld)’, housed in Queensland’s state
archives.[7] The parliamentary debates in relation to the ‘1897 Act’
reflected a range of political arguments and differences of opinion
regarding the treatment of Indigenous Queenslanders that existed amongst
the parliamentarians of the era. Several arguments were posed as
justification for the 1897 Act, but three points detailed in the debates
were specifically emphasised. The first concerned the establishment and
enforcement of legislated penalties for supplying liquor to ‘Aboriginals’
and ‘half-castes’. The second referred to similar provisions outlawing the
supply of opium to ‘Aboriginals’ and ‘half-castes’. The third referred to
making it a punishable offence for non-Aboriginal people to possess
government blankets that had been issued to ‘Aboriginals’ and
‘half-castes’ by the State appointed Protectors of Aboriginal
Queenslanders.[8] As historian Rosalind Kidd has noted: ‘Protectors were
directed to see that they do not get any liquor or opium, that they keep
their blankets’.[9]

In general, the focus of these parliamentary debates centred on the
belief that a system of ‘care and protection’ for Aboriginal people would
work for their betterment. The passing of the 1897 Act empowered the
Queensland government to regulate, discipline and control every aspect of
Aboriginal Queenslander’s lives. It meant that the government dictated
where Indigenous Queenslanders could live, where they could work, how they
could spend their wages and whom they could marry. In many cases the
government decided if they could keep their own children.

With the knowledge of hindsight, it is clear that in reality, ‘care
and protection’ was in fact regulation through ‘control and incarceration’
most particularly via the removal orders of Section 9 of the 1897 Act.
This Section 9 gave government officials the legal right to remove
Aboriginal people from their homelands and elsewhere and place them onto
reserves and missions.

Section 9: It shall be lawful for the Minister
to cause every aboriginal within any District, not being an aboriginal
excepted from the provisions of this section, to be removed to, and kept
within the limits of, any reserve situated within such District, in such
manner, and subject to such conditions, as may be prescribed. The
Minister may, subject to the said conditions, cause any aboriginal to be
removed from one reserve to another.[10]

Other parts of the 1897 Act were equally oppressive and reveal the
extensive powers of the Chief Protector in regulating Indigenous lives and
communities. They included the authority to control and restrict all
movements on and off reserves (Section 11), determine, regulate and revoke
12 month employment permits issued to ‘Aboriginal and half-castes’
(Sections 12 and 13), supervise all ‘Aboriginal and female half-castes’ in
employment (Sections 15 and 16) and prevent any removal of Aboriginal
people to other districts or outside the colony of Queensland (Section
17).

It is now recognised that the removal system created by the 1897 Act
delivered a trans-generational impact on the lives of Aboriginal people
that is still felt today. Many researchers and writers have noted that the
process of removal resulted in the demise of Aboriginal societies, with
the loss of homelands, kin, culture, language and identity.[11]Queensland’s ‘protectionist’ system can be characterised by
an ongoing multi-faceted and systematic attempt to transform Aboriginal
societies and culture. With the many removals fragmenting families and
kinship groups, numerous Aboriginal languages and sub-cultures were
transformed to the point of extinction.[12] The certificate of exemption itself was introduced
originally in Section 33 of the 1897 Act, which stated that:

It shall be lawful for the Minister to issue to
any half-caste, who, in his opinion, ought not to be subject to the
provisions of this Act, a certificate, in writing under his hand, and
that such half-caste is exempt from the provisions of this Act and the
Regulations, and from and after the issue of such certificate, such
half-caste shall be so exempt accordingly.[13]

The exemption certificate represented the only legal mechanism by
which Indigenous Queenslanders could live independently away from reserves
or missions, out from ‘under the Act’. However, it required severing all
ties with their Aboriginal kinship and culture including connections with
country, or the exemption could be revoked by the state.[14]

Historian Thom Blake has noted:

Exemption Certificates were granted only to
those Aborigines who demonstrated to the Chief Protector’s satisfaction
the capacity to survive in the outside world. In other words, they were
imbued with capitalist values concerning money, time and work. But the
standards required for exemption were high; certificates were not freely
issued.[15]

In his view, exemption from the ‘under the Act’ was offered as an
incentive, a reward for working hard and obeying the rules. He
argues:

As well as punitive measures; there was one
incentive for workers to give faithful and diligent services – exemption
from the Act.[16]

Castle and Hagen, in the only, albeit unpublished, article written
entirely about the certificate of exemption, ‘Turning black into white:
the exemption system in Queensland 1908-1965’, emphasise the economic
situation concerning Aboriginal workers’ labour relations and unionism
issues, triggered by the government’s ‘protectionist’ policy. They argue
that ‘[t]he aim of the 1897 Act was to establish a system which would
cover all Aborigines in the Colony and regulate their contacts with other
inhabitants of Queensland’.[17] The financial and logistical advantages for government would
be less Aboriginal people to care for. In effect the system established by
the Act enshrined the distinction between Aborigines and
‘half-castes’.[18]

My research into official exemption statistics found that over the
60 years from 1908 until 1967/8, a total of 4092 certificates of exemption
were issued. This figure included 2520 males and 1570 females, as well as
1165 children on their mother’s certificate. The age groups of exemptees
varied from the very young (9 months, in 1908) to the very old (88 years
in 1958). It is likely that the older applicants were seeking their
certificates of exemption so that they could claim their entitlements as
Age Pensioners. Prior to 1958, Commonwealth benefits for Aboriginal people
were only given if the person lived off a ‘reserve or mission’.[19] In another example, information found in the 1958 Register
of Certificates of Exemption Issued involved Aboriginal people at the
Lazaret on Fantome Island, where inmates applied for Invalid pensions and
other Commonwealth benefits after being exempted.[20]

One personal highlight during my research was to actually hold the
original ‘The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale
of Opium Act, 1897 (Qld)’ document in my gloved hands for a few
minutes. Whilst I realised that this was a great privilege, I also
realised that I held in my hands the very document that had literally
enslaved my family and countless other families over many decades. I was
aware that this piece of paper was responsible for so much loss and
heartache for thousands of Indigenous Australians. The loss of kinship,
culture and traditional land, which also encompassed stolen wages[21]and even stolen children, was the painful legacy of this
aging document. The 1897 Act had come close to achieving the genocide of
Australia’s original inhabitants and it was certainly responsible for
generations of despondency and helplessness that persist to this
day.

Aboriginal writers, when writing their autobiographies, typically
seem to skip quickly over the issue of exemption certificates. Was the
certificate of exemption something that they were not comfortable writing
about? Or was it that they knew very little about the exemption? To leave
a State Reserve or church mission required an application for a
certificate of exemption. I can understand now why many Aboriginal people
sought a certificate as the only possible path to freedom and
independence. This has been explained by such writers as Marnie Kennedy,
Jackie Huggins, Albert Holt, Regina Ganter and Ruth Hegarty.[22] Their writings illustrate the varied lifestyles each was
forced to adopt in order to survive injustices and live within
contemporary Australian society. For those still living ‘under the Act’ it
meant to live a life of subjection and servitude, with very few, if any,
of the freedoms enjoyed and taken for granted by the wider
community.

[7] Public Acts of the Parliament of Queensland.
Aboriginals: An Act to make Provision for the better Protection and
Care of the Aboriginal and Half-caste Inhabitants of the Colony, and
to make more effectual Provision for Restricting the Sale and
Distribution of Opium [Assented to 15 December 1897].

[8] Queensland Parliamentary Debates on the
Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Bill 1897:
1541.

[13] Aboriginals Protection and the
Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld):
6182.

[14] The system of exemption was incorporated in
protectionist policies later elsewhere after the federation of
Australia in 1901. For example, NSW Aborigines Protection
Act 1909-1943 and later the NSW Aborigines
Welfare Act 1943-1968 in New South Wales, the
Aborigines Act 1905, in Western Australia and the
Aborigines Act Amendment Act 1939 in South
Australia including the Northern Territory. Like the Queensland
legislation, the conditions of exemption included the requirement of
severing family connections and could be revoked at any time.

[18] Castle and Hagan also make the observation
that, by substituting the word ‘Aboriginal’ for ‘half-caste’ in its
definitions, the amended 1939 version of Act made it possible for
‘full-bloods’ to become eligible for the certificate of
exemption.